First published 1968
A couple moves through their relationship as eight different storytellers observe and interpret their lives. Each narrator sees the same events but tells a completely different story. The woman and man struggle with love in a world that seems designed to corrupt everything good. Between these shifting accounts, the narrators pause to reflect on what they've witnessed. The couple faces a central problem: how can anyone achieve happiness when the very act of trying seems to destroy it? The stories suggest that only by accepting failure can success become possible. The narrators disagree about whether this love story ends happily or tragically. The book argues that both endings exist simultaneously, like a geometric shape that works on paper but cannot exist in real space.
Genres: literary-fiction, 20th-century, contemporary, 21st-century
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: multiple-perspectives, unreliable-narrator
224 pages · Hardcover · Hodder & Stoughton Ltd